A scrap of gossip among the waiters of a Navi Mumbai reached a police constable, enabling the Navi Mumbai police to crack the murder of an unidentified woman who was found dead in Vashi last year.

On December 27 last year, the body of a woman in her 30s was found in a nullah in sector 17 in Vashi. Post-mortem examination indicated severe trauma to the head and a complaint of murder was registered against unknown persons. However, since then, the police could not get any clues to ascertain the identity of the victim.

Earlier this month, a bar waiter working in Vashi, while having a casual conversation with police constable Parshuram Kengar, told him that he had heard about a bar girl going missing a few months ago. The waiter told Kengar that the girl was having an affair with a regular customer at the bar where she worked and had suddenly disappeared. Kengar relayed the information to his superiors and a probe was initiated.

Over the next few days, the police zeroed in on a customer named Yogesh Kale. The police learnt he would be going to the Neelam Bar and Restaurant in Sanpada Tuesday night. They laid a trap and picked up Kale up along with his friends Sachin More and Ankush Katkar, who were also with him at the time.

“During interrogation, Kale confessed to have killed a bar girl identified as Anjali Shetty, who used to work at a bar in Nerul that he frequented. Kale had got into an affair with Anjali. However, when she started insisting that he marry her, he took help of More and Katkar to get rid of her,” said Deputy Commissioner of Police Shrikant Pathak of Navi Mumbai Police Crime Branch.

On December 26, the trio picked up Anjali from the bar and took her to Vashi, where they hit her repeatedly on the head and strangled her with her own dupatta. They then dumped the body in the nullah where it was found the next day, and fled the scene, the police said.